In a post sometime back I included a report from a female correspondent in Afghanistan which gave an account of the description by soldiers watching a drone hit as a snuff video game

The quotes below are from Worldfocus, an American newscast focused on international news and reporting. It distributed to U.S. public television stations by American Public Television and ceased broadcasting on April 2, 2010


"As unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have become increasingly central to America's wars, "drone porn" has taken the internet by storm with captivating aerial images of death and destruction.
The Defense Department actually posts its drone attack footage on YouTube via DVidsHub. Some of the videos have caught the attention of millions

The military's Predators and Reapers routinely strike Iraq, Afghanistan — and increasingly in Yemen, Somalia and elsewhere

With an aim of promoting UAVs domestically as well as "enlightening" our enemies, the Defense Department recently began placing the Predator and Reaper mission clips on YouTube.
Ranging from relatively detached wide shots of bombings taken by onboard cameras to startlingly graphic close-ups, the so-called "drone porn" has been a smash hit, as it were, tallying over 10 million views

Some marvel at the new technology and discuss the resulting paradigm shift in warfare. Some raise questions, including whether it's principled, dignified or otherwise in America's best interest to post drone prone in the first place. Most comments are along the lines of, "Hell yeah HOOOAH BABY!" "


The most watched "drone porn" segments are from Iraq. One video of the killing of "Six armed criminals' Baghdad has over 1 million views:

Uncle Dave O said -

"If you object to a soldier's being able to kill an enemy from a fairly remote distance, you are about five hundred years behind the times, and need to abolish firearms entirely"

I'm not out of touch with reality Uncle Dave O but I am increasingly disturbed with the separation between the attacker and the 'target' - the CIA drone operators are based in the US I believe - and even more so with the increasing overlap between video games of killing and warfare and the association between the legitimate, and highly skilled sport of target shooting. with the shooting of other human who are reduced to mere 'targets' which I feel this video belongs to.

"….the moral hazards of such extrajudicial killings are never explored in video games, or drone attacks, and all the usual human safeguards against killing during a ground invasion (namely that you have to look your target in the eye while killing them with your bare hands) are no longer an obstacle."


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